


A Halloween Night in New Orleans

by Burnadette_dpdl



Category: Interview With the Vampire (1994), Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, M/M, Multi, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 06:23:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burnadette_dpdl/pseuds/Burnadette_dpdl
Summary: Lestat and Louis get ready for Halloween during their early years in the Interview with the Vampire era; Claudia insists on them all “dressing up” as vampires.





	A Halloween Night in New Orleans

**Author's Note:**

> This gift is part of the @vcsecretgifts exchange on Tumblr, and it is for @songsforskyline, who requested: _"Lestat and Louis taking Claudia trick-or-treating on Halloween and them “dressing up” as vampires if that’s okay? thank you!! (also if you want more specifics, can Lestat go all out on the stereotypes and Louis is 200% done?)"_ I added some angst in there, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Major shout out to @Rebness/@wicked-felina for beta reading this and making great suggestions that improved it <3

I awoke in the darkness of the coffin, finding my arms empty, but knowing Claudia was still inside with me. She never woke before I did; this was one of the few occasions that I must have unconsciously turned away from her before succumbing to the deathsleep. The backs of her knuckles were pressed against my shoulder blades, her hands clasped around the current favorite doll. I was always amused at this position, it was as if we made up one creature in which she was the too-small shell on a full-size turtle. Normally, I might allow myself to slip back into a light sleep, or at least close my eyes and meditate for a quarter of an hour, waiting for her to ‘wake me up’ with her fingers in my hair, and a soft little “Bonsoir, Papa Noir!” It was also how Lestat woke me, if I chose to share his coffin.

However, tonight was Halloween, and I wanted to find out what, if anything, Lestat had planned, or more importantly, if he had done anything that might need to be _undone_. I leaned on my left arm, rose up, careful not to disturb Claudia, let myself out of the coffin, and quietly replaced the lid.

I slipped on my robe and went across the hall to the master bedroom. I did sometimes share it with Lestat, but as it was filled mostly with his things and it was where he quarantined himself when in an irritable mood, it was his room. The ‘sitting room’ shared a wall with his, and that was my room, but it served mostly as a closet as I rarely spent time there.

As I crossed the threshold, Lestat was standing in his closet, half the contents of which were strewn over his bed and other furniture. An opera cape was slung over the settee. As I came closer, he pulled out a pair of pants and held them to a coat to match, and, dissatisfied, turned back to the closet.  

“Bonsoir, Lestat.” I said. He mumbled back a greeting. “Haven’t decided on your Halloween costume yet?”

He gave a strangled sigh. “I know what I want, I just can’t find the damned jacket… it’s in here someplace.”

“What are you going to be?”

He stopped and turned to me. He was wearing the clothes he wears to sleep, soft cotton pants and a dark red robe, but had several scarves around his neck, presumably for potential use tonight. The colors clashed, lime green, bright orange, and pale sky-blue silks. His blonde hair was untamed, still in the wild waves from sleep, appearing windswept. I grinned at the disparity between the serious red robe, clownish scarves, and his expression of mild frustration.

“You know what I’m going to be,” he said soberly.

“I didn’t think you’d actually go through with that-”

“Of course I would, I said so, and I will!” He turned back to his closet.

A few weeks earlier, Claudia and I were at the chessboard in the parlor, winding down the last hours of the evening. Lestat played something light at the harpsichord, softening the blow as I took her white queen. I set the piece gently by my side of the board, looking to her apologetically, but she had challenged me, “play _mean_ like you play against Papa Jaune!” I do intentionally take his queen as an early demoralizing move, if I can manage it. Her small fingertip landed on the turrets of one of her rooks, contemplating retaliation.

 _“Vampires,"_ she said decisively. “We should all be vampires for Halloween.” It was a tone that left no room for argument.

Lestat flicked his eyes at me and then back to his sheet music. “You really think so, _cherie?_ Seems a bit simple for artists of our caliber.”

“The ones I’ve read about in the folklore don’t look like us, Papa Jaune. They’re _scary!”_

Lestat scoffed at that. “Is that so? I’m not scary?” He smiled widely, baring his fangs.

She had leaned back to peer at him as he spoke, but now returned her attention to the board with a derisive little snort. “You know what I mean. The vampires in those stories are _dirty,_ they have scraggly hair and they wear moldy lace!” She said with some relish. Then, she looked at him and in a lower voice, “Are we related to them?”

He hesitated a moment. “We’re… different.” I could tell from his tone that he would prefer a change of topic.

“How so?” she leaned on the arm of her chair, staring at him with her chin in her hand.

“Claudia, why not choose something else, maybe _Le Petit Chaperon Rouge?”_ I said.

She turned back to me and took one of my bishops with some flair and a toothy smile, twirling it and then aligning it with the other killed black pieces on her side. It was a short-lived feeling of triumph; her smile faded when she again eyed the teeming graveyard of her white pieces. Even with this small victory, she was edging towards a sulk. “Too boooooring,” she whined.

“Alright, we can be vampires,” Lestat said quickly, his voice at a low register. “The filthier the better, _oui,_ mademoiselle?”

At the time, his acquiescence had pleased her immensely, and we moved on from the topic.

I smoothed out a wrinkle of the opera cape, drawn back to the present by the gesture. “Does it matter? Won’t it be covered by the cape anyway?”

 _“Mon cher_ , it’s a whole package. So yes, it matters! I’m going as a proper vampire. _Honestly._ ” Lestat huffed. He looked over his shoulder and eyed my clothes. “You should get started, Claudia will be up any minute and will want our... _your_ full attention. Have you chosen what to wear?”

“I’m not,” I said. Then, clarifying: “I’m not dressing as one of her vampires.”

“Oh, you must! You’ll bring the group down if you don’t.” Finally satisfied with a matching jacket and pants set, he tossed his robe off and stripped off his shirt.

“I dislike the idea, why does she want to dress as what we are? Is this… does she have some need to reveal us to people?” I sat down on the settee.

He put a pearly blouse on and fastened the buttons in quick movements. “She’s a _child_ , Louis, you remember that desire to reveal your nature to people in those first years. She’s only been with us for two, she must feel something like that.”

“Did you feel that need, when you became a vampire?” I said quietly, not meeting his gaze. I had found that asking a question with eye contact made him feel interrogated; he would respond evasively at best, and aggressively at worst.

“I…” He began, and stopped. He stood there, with no pants, a blouse, and those scarves, staring out the window. “I did want that. Recognition? To be known for what I was. Whatever that might lead to. There are times I feel it now. _L'appel du vide,_ for us, perhaps.” He shook out the pants and pulled them on.

“It’s more than that. She’s been curious about these new American traditions, asking about tasting a _fruitcake_ , of all things!” He looked at me with no small amount of disdain. “As if I would have _chosen_ to bite into a veritable brick of old bread, nuts, and fruit when I had the chance to do so.” He finished with his shoes and went to the vanity to tame his hair. “And we had them, you know. The old cake from last year was to be eaten, and the fresh to be put away for the following year. Disgusting. My mother always excused me from eating it.”

He froze abruptly and his eyes widened just enough that I saw fear sluice across them in the reflection from the mirror. He’d revealed another scrap of his life from _before_ , and I schooled my expression to remain calm, and focused my attention on his cape. I untangled the ties and brought it over to him, as if I didn’t feel a little thrill at having extracted such a small thing from him. He had been a child, he had a mother! He did not choose this life any more than he would have chosen the offensive pastry of his youth. I wanted it so desperately, to know what he had been through before.

Breaking the silence, I said, “There are so many immigrants here, bringing their culture with them.” I approached him from behind and began to fix his cape about his neck and shoulders, glancing at his face in the mirror. “The Germans put pine trees in their parlors for Christmas, apparently.” I smoothed the fabric on his shoulders. Clasped them reassuringly.

He smiled nervously. Was he hopeful I’d missed his admission, or glad that I hadn’t addressed it and probed for more? “They bring a _living tree_ into their home? With sap dripping all over it? And the pine needles shedding all over the floor! It must ruin the furniture. How barbaric!” he said.

I was relieved when Claudia arrived, yawning, her doll held lovingly in the crook of her arm. She greeted us both and Lestat swept her up into his arms to shower her with kisses.

 _“Mon petit chouchou!_ It’s been forever since we’ve seen you!” he cried, nuzzling her nose with his and stroking her tousled curls back from her face.

“It’s only been _eleven hours!”_ she laughed. On many evenings, we would act as though we had been separated for years, begging her to tell us where she’d been off to, and she would correct us that it had only been a number of hours. Or, if she was in the mood, she might invent wild stories of adventure, that she had been dancing all night in St. Louis Cathedral or captaining a steamboat up the Mississippi River.

“So, _ma cherie,_ does my costume meet your approval?” Lestat asked, setting her down on the settee. She studied him as he turned fully around for her review.

“It all matches, yes, but… it’s not quite _right_ ,” she mused, chewing at her lower lip. And then, softly, “The stories say we’re supposed to be _dirty._ Remember?”

He put his hands on his hips, canting them invitingly. “We could go out in the garden and roll around in the flowerbeds, would that meet your standards?” She nodded excitedly. After changing her into an appropriately immaculate white dress, they bounded down the stairs and into the courtyard, all toothy smiles.

 

They were in the garden for about twenty minutes before I heard glass shatter and her stuttered crying.

Instantly, Lestat was in my room. His eyes were a silvery blue in contrast to the streak of dark mud across his face.

“Louis! She’s crying for her mother, I don’t know what to do, please, for the love of God _do something!”_ He gripped my wrist hard enough that he might have cut off the circulation. He raked his other hand through his hair, making trenches of damp muck through it. “I don’t know what to do,” he said a few more times.

I didn’t speak, pushing past him, and made my way outside to her by the narrow spiral staircase. I moved as quickly as I could with him crowding against my side; I don’t think my feet even touched every step.

She was near the back of the courtyard. She sobbed into her arms, half her body slumped on the ledge of the great fountain. Her white dress and golden hair made a glowing gemstone against the dark flagstones in the moonlight, even with the mud streaked all over. The water lilies shivered in the current of the water.

I held out my hand to signal Lestat to stay back as I approached, as he was most likely the cause of all this. She grimaced in her crying, and yes, faintly, I did hear her calling _“Maman…”_ Red tears stained her cheeks, smeared on her arms.

 _"Mademoiselle?”_ I said softly, sitting down on the flagstones a few feet away. She quieted somewhat but her shoulders still shook with her labored breathing. “Can you tell me where I might find Claudia?” I asked.

Her face still in her arms, she rolled her head slightly sideways to eye me from under her hair. It was dirty and matted, and her arms had drying mud caked on them, in the moonlight, the swirls and raised areas were eerily like diseased flesh.

“You see, I am getting ready to go out on this lovely Halloween night with my dau- a little girl called Claudia…” I ventured a little closer, tilting my head curiously at her. “Do you know her?”

“Me. I’m her,” she said. She didn’t move from her place.

“Oh! I didn’t recognize you. You’re look so different, all covered with dirt,” I said, eyeing her face and arms. “Almost like... a little _vampire_.” She cracked a small smile but it vanished quickly.

In a few fractured sentences I gathered that the two of them had used the fountain water and flowerbed dirt to get each other thoroughly filthy, with plenty of laughter at Lestat’s protests that her dress was utterly ruined! Satisfied with the dirt aspect of the costumes, Claudia had demanded of Lestat to give her his best, most terrifying face. And that had been much more frightening than she had anticipated. And now she was still shaken from it. He and I both sometimes failed in this, taking into account that she was only a child, and I did not admonish him for it, not in that moment. He still lingered by one of the courtyard benches, a hand worrying at the ironwork, but not seated.

“Claudia, I’m so sorry he frightened you. I’m sure he didn’t mean it, did you, Papa Jaune?” I twisted around to cue his response.

“No, of course not,” he said. He looked like he wanted to say more, but it strangled in his throat and he looked away.

“See, he didn’t mean it in a _mean_ way,” I assured her.

“Where is Maman?”

Her eyes were rimmed red again, but at least she was facing us now, her fingers balling in her dress. The unnatural gleaming skin and blood streaks rendered her the ghost of her former self, the child I had first found that night almost two years ago. That we had been happy for so long, that I had awoken beside her tonight, all that briefly seemed unreal. That she was in fact an apparition that haunted me for my crime seemed more likely, but I felt the cool flagstones under my legs, heard the tiny insects of the night, and answered her as best I could.

“She’s in Heaven,” I said softly. If we were going to lie to her, we were at least obligated to be consistent with it. “My Maman is up there, too.” I offered. “My Maman loves to crochet, does yours? I’m sure that they’re friends.”

This seemed to touch something in her, and she blinked, rubbed dirty fingers under her eyes, wiping at the unspilled tears. “Really? Yours is there, too?”

I hesitated. “Yes, she is.”

As if it was a colossal effort, she dragged her eyes up to Lestat. “His Maman, too?” Her eyes were wide and earnest, and still a little afraid of him.

Lestat seemed to collect his thoughts, and then, studying us, he spoke. “I don't know where my mother is any more than you do,” and a fracture ran through my heart; he sounded more honest in that statement than in anything else he’d claimed he didn’t know, when in fact it was regarding something he would not give. “But, I do miss her, as much as you miss your Maman.” His voice deflated, then he let out a sharp sigh as he moved to sit on the bench.

I turned back to Claudia and inched a little closer to her. “You see, we are all of us orphans. Papa Jaune and I hurt, too. We get frightened sometimes, too.” I dipped my hand into the cool water of the fountain, watching the orange flashes of goldfish swim by and nibble at my fingers. “We need each other, we are all we have in this world, and we won’t leave you.”

She stared into my eyes, clinging to my words like a promise.

She closed the distance between us, and hugged me fiercely. Her cheek brushed mine and I wrapped my arms around her.

I peered back at him, Lestat was visibly relieved. He approached us as Claudia leaned back.

“Look what you’ve done!” He said in a mock-scolding tone. “Your dirtied up Papa Noir.” He gestured to where she had, in fact, left evidence of her embrace across my sombre black coat. “Shall we do his face and his back to match us?” he grinned mischievously and she nodded emphatically, the two of them gleefully completing my Halloween costume.

 

***

We left the Rue Royale with a few pillow cases to gather candy, Claudia in between us. We each held one of her hands, and every few steps she might give us a count and we would swing her forward, her feet kicking the air.  

Throughout the French Quarter, our neighbors opened their doors to us and smiled warmly, gushing over Claudia’s beauty, even though not one of them knew immediately what our ‘costumes’ were. To a few of them, she accepted their guess that we were haunts of some kind; to others, she displayed her fangs, and they were genuinely frightened. They would give her large handfuls of candy, then hurry back inside and lock their doors. I still felt that this was a dangerous amount of exposure, but Lestat tightened his arm about my waist and leaned in, his lips at my ear, “Most of them are drunk, anyway. They think they’re imagining it,” while Claudia would turn to us, exhilarated, “I’m so scary!”

 

***

At home, Claudia plopped herself down cross-legged on the carpet and examined her haul of candy, little toys, and coins. I started a fire going and Lestat lit a few lamps.

“Yuck, this one tastes bad,” she said, spitting a chocolate back into its foil wrapper. She flicked her gaze up at us. “Aren’t you going to have some of yours?” In her hands, a red-wrapped hard candy spun as she untwisted the ends to open it.

“I’m saving mine for later, _ma petite,_ ” Lestat yawned, leaning comfortably against me on the couch.

She tasted and spat out several more, all different colors of wrapping. “Mine are _all_ bad!” she said, frowning. “Give me yours.” I handed her my bag, and after trying a few, she declared with shock that all of the candy was completely spoiled.

“How can this happen, that the whole town has spoiled candy on Halloween of all nights!” she balled up all the wrappers and shoved them into the trash bin.

“Maybe it only tastes spoiled to you, _a spoiled little girl!”_ Lestat teased. I admonished him with a little slap to his knuckles, but he caught my hand, and kissed my palm.

“No, everyone _tricked_ us rather than _treated_.” her eyes widened and she puffed up her chest. “That’s what ‘Trick or treat,’ really means, isn’t it?” she announced with the certainty of exposing a grand conspiracy.

We couldn’t help but laugh, Lestat agreeing emphatically that she must be right, it must be a conspiracy! She continued to theorize about how they must have planned this months ago in order to have the candy spoiled at just the right time, and how even her tutors must have known about this, and kept it all a secret.

Lestat sat up and dusted off his pants. “Well, there is some ‘candy’ I know of that you’d absolutely enjoy,” he arched his brow and smirked at her. “It’s red, and liquid, and very, _very_ fresh.”

“Oooh! Yesyesyes…” she said, her tongue flicking at her fangs. She gathered up the coin stacks and added them to her little coin purse.

“The night is young, _ma petite,”_ he said, rising and offering her his hand. “Will you dine with me?”

She leapt up and took his hand, and he glanced at me in invitation. I waved them away, and they left. I watched them from the balcony on the second floor, and felt assured that this year’s Halloween night had been memorable for us all.


End file.
